Nineteen months and one day!

Okay, six months without blogging. That's quite a long time when I consider that it represents a third of Alice's entire life.

So, updates:

POETRY
Nothing doing. (I am giving a reading to 20 Spanish students next week but I don't think that counts as a major development compared to say, actually putting pen to paper.

NOVEL
I have begun my crime novel several times, and have been foiled twice by laptop meltdown and once (ok more than once) by a complete change of mind about plot, setting, tone and characterisation. Ha.

BABY
Alice is finally walking, with a determined John Wayne swagger. She goes to nursery 1.5 days a week, and loves it. Her favourite activities are looking at books (hm, don't know where she gets it from), eating and/or smearing food into every available surface, putting things into other things/taking things out of other things, throwing balls, and chatting to the ants in the garden.

She had her first speech assessment with the cleft team last month, and 'passed' with flying colours. Although the cleft palate is causing slight nasality, she can make all the key consonant sounds including the tricky 'p' and 'b', and her vocabulary and communication skills are very good for her age. Words mastered include: mummy, daddy, duck, dog, cat, rabbit, cow, mouse, pig, teddy, bear, ant, rain, star, ball, house, brick, book, bye, banana, please, bee, peas (the last three are a bit interchangeable), up, down, red, blue. The list grows daily. She's a constant babbler as well, but hasn't yet combined the conversational talk with the actual words.

Just lately, she is prone to instant tantrums if what she wants doesn't materialise, occasionally even before she asks for it, which is not a welcome development. I think we might have spoiled her a little, and now that she's not a baby any more and technically has other ways to communicate, I tend to panic when she does scream and just do whatever she wants. Oh dear.